


Prodigy

by DamadiSangue



Series: Broken inside [2]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), Relationship Issues, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 22:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamadiSangue/pseuds/DamadiSangue
Summary: A black and red profile - eyes that study her with an almost frightening intensity."She is only six months old.""I know.""I didn't think she was capable of such a thing."A pupil that reduced to nothing, a reptile."She is the first of her kind."Her mother leans out toward her, frowned eyebrows, and her hair is picked up in a messy knot."She doesn't need to think, or to connect: she just does it."





	Prodigy

Disclaimer: Albert Wesker, Alex Wesker and all other characters belong to Shinji Mikami, Capcom and those who hold the rights. The plot and the character of Eve are author's copyright ( DamadiSangue )

 

 

 

"I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult.  
Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs."  
\- Gillian Flynn -

 

 

**Prodigy**

**#1 - hearing.**

**Hey, girl, open the walls, play with your dolls,**  
**we'll be a perfect family.**

 

A heartbeat that she recognizes - it has accompanied her for nine months.  
The murmur of a masculine, warm voice; someone who has watched over her from the beginning.  
The noise of the waves, the rhythmic _tac tac_ of her mother's shoes.  
Moved papers, metal puffs - a thin lullaby that cuts on the tongue, hard and ruthless.  
Broken glass, prayers that are silenced in an amorphous sound - a dense plotch.  
The squeaking of a spring in a chair, her mother's nails tapping on a rigid surface.

Silence.

"Eve."

_Father._

"Her name is Eve."

Her name has the same consistency of a promise.

**No one ever listens, this wallpaper glistens,**  
**don't let them see what goes down in the kitchen.**

The rain has a peculiar noise for Eve.  
It reminds her of something she hasn't heard yet, but only lived - from which her mother defended her with all the protery of a single and desperate female.  
It falls around her, caresses her face in a cold stroke.  
"Do you like the rain, Eve?" her mother asks, and she has a beautiful voice.  
Stained at the corners - her mother's voice is dirty with a fragile and helpless inflection, something that few can grasp.  
_No_ , she would like to answer _, I don't like it._

_Because it reminds me of when they shot you: when the Progenitor yelled and you with him._

A sigh; a half hiccup.  
Years later Eve will understand.

_She will remember._

The rain has the same sound as the bullet that will kill her mother.

 

 **Picture, picture, smile for the picture,**  
**pose with your brother, won't you be a good sister?**

There is someone who speaks to her, _always._  
It has **no** consistency, **no** shape; it vibrates in her blood, among her thoughts.  
It translates, modulates; the Voice is the first thing she heard, it will be the last one.  
The Voice is also in her mother, in her father.  
It's a tragic solo in her mother, a threatening roar in her father.  
It shows, the Voice, blemishes.  
It tells her stories of monsters _and_ wild beasts; men who look like her ( _they are not_ ) and dogs of metal and steel.  
It tells and _cuts_ \- in the bones, in the flesh: memories that will become scars of a war that has not begun yet.

_But it will be soon._

Eve smiles in the darkness, stretches her hands to that voice - toward **its** strength, **its** warmth.

_She snatches a very big snake and she doesn't see the end of it._

The Progenitor rolls around her heart and _whispers._

 

**#2 - sight**

**Places, places, get in your places,**  
**throw on your dress and put on your doll faces.**

 

Her mother's eyes are transparent.  
Not blue or azure: transparent.  
Eve smiles - a disarming gesture for a little girl who can reduce a Cerberus to nothing more than a docile pet dog.  
The room is gray.  
Not black or white: gray.  
Eve doesn't like that color; she finds him sad, lifeless.  
She grabs a corner of her mother's shirt and _pulls_ \- she gets a puzzled look and questioning.  
Stuart's face is serene.  
Not distant, or disinterested; serene.  
He is at her mother's side, she smiles - warm under her fingers, on her cheek.  
"I think she wants her attentions, Master Alex."  
"Guh."  
Her mother raises an eyebrow, touches her as if she could break at any moment - as if _she_ could crumble under the weight of her existence.  
The jacket against which she rolls is red.  
Not fuchsia, or coral: red.  
"She seeks her, Master Alex."  
Eve sighs, relaxes in her arms.  
"It's _all_ she knows."  
She closes her eyes, relaxes in her mother's quiet breath.  
"All the Progener tells her to follow - _to trust."_  
Alex bends her lips in a strange grimace - contracted, uncertain.

_Insecure._

Eve falls asleep dreaming of a world that has the same color of blood.

**Everyone thinks that we're perfect,**  
**please don't let them look through the curtains.**

A black and red profile - eyes that study her with an almost frightening intensity.  
"She is _only_ six months old."  
"I know."  
"I didn't think she was capable of such a thing."  
A pupil that reduced to _nothing,_ a reptile.  
"She is the first of her kind."  
Her mother leans out toward her, frowned eyebrows, and her hair is picked up in a messy knot.  
"She doesn't need to _think,_ or to connect: she _just_ does it."  
Eve opens her mouth, laughs - she doesn't understand.  
The Progenitor tells her that _everything is fine; that they are not angry._  
The Progenitor assures her that _she did nothing wrong; they are just trying to understand. To contextualize._  
Eve tilts her face in their direction, she clutches her toes between her little fingers.  
"I don't feel fear, or doubt."  
Her mother nods, passes her tongue tip over her lips.  
"There is no anxiety, nor worry."  
"I know."  
Her father sounds anxious - confused.  
"She did it because she found it _funny._ "  
Her mother glances at her father, crosses her arms on her chest.  
"Well... in a way it was."  
Her dad drums his fingers on the edge of the cradle, Eve is lost in the rhythmic movement of his black-banded hands.  
"Uhm." he only says, and goes away slightly.  
"A dancing zombie in the middle of the monitor room?"  
Her mother smiles, leans on her side against the wall.  
"Michael Jackson did it before her, didn't he?"  
Eve watches his father's iris turn into a dark red, _drip_ \- then explode in a lump of burning colors.

_Crimson and orange - a livery that he will wear even in his last, desperate, moments._

Her mother releases a laugh that is _almost_ offensive.

 

 **Dollhouse, dollhouse,**  
**I see things that nobody else sees.**

Eve observes them.  
She has already done it before; she had studied them as they fight - their emotions a hot tangle at the center of her chest.  
She had spied on them while they were working in synchrony, silent for hours - the Progenitor nothing, but a quiet background buzz.  
She had looked curiously at them as they bent over her - the fear of her mother, the pride of her father.  
Eve rubs her eyelids, opens her mouth _(I'm hungry_ ), closes it when the Progenitor tells her to wait, that there will be time.

_Now it's just an instant only for them - private, **rare.**_

Eve turns to see them - again, **always.**

 _Alex smiles, stretches out her hand._  
_"Do you remember, Albert?"_  
_Wesker looks at her with a strange gaze, he understands - he smiles at a memory never turned off._  
_"Yes."_  
_He intertwines his fingers with hers, gets up - moves with her,_ for _her; a silly waltz whose symphony resonates only between Alex's lips._

Eve looks at them.  
Their movements, the way her mother leans her head on her father's shoulder, the quiet profile of him while they are lost in the rhythm of invisible music.

 _Wesker strokes the slender curve of her hip, climbs along her ribs with his fingertips -_ pulls.  
_Alex searches for his mouth,_ sinks _; she_ bends _in his arms, laughs - tears a moment to fate, to history._

Eve laughs with them and holds a moment fragile like her dreams.

 

**#3 - smell**

 

 **Hey, girl, look at my mom, she's got it going on**  
**Ha, you're blinded by her jewelry.**

 

Sushestvovanie is snow _and_ ice.  
Eve breathes its smell, wet rocks and mold.  
She closes her eyes, recognizes the scent of her mother (argan _and_ blood) that of Stuart (incense _and_ bergamot).  
She is one year old, Eve.  
She had walked at two months, she can talk about three.  
She exhales, and the smell of dead meat invades her nostrils - her mother's experiments to cure the disease that is killing her.  
The Progenitor tells her that she is _special_ ; that nothing works like in other children.  
Eve, however, saw them: she _heard_ them.  
Every once in a while they run around the Tower, stumble in the roots of the trees lining the entrance.  
She sniffed their smell; she acknowledged who would not come to adulthood, but who, on the other hand, is already wearing the rancid smell of fear.  
They play, they joke, they hurt themselves - a luxury that is _not_ allowed to her.  
Eve fixes her palm, raises an eyebrow.  
She stretches to her mother's paper knife, cuts herself - opens pale and otherwise perfect skin

_Plotch. Plotch. Plotch._

She sees the blood _bloom_ , slipping between her fingers - _dripping_ on the white floor.  
The Progenitor whispers - regenerates, closes, _reconstructs._  
Eve knows it is not normal; she knows there's something different in her.

_But she has no fear of it._

A noise: martial footsteps, _hard._

_They don't ask, they don't give._

 She tilts her face to the door, tightens her hand in a closed fist.

_Maninka and leather. Africa and black skin as their hearts._

She turns, she sees - she seeks **him.**  
Albert Wesker already emits the stench of death that will take him in a few months.

 

 **When you turn your back she pulls out a flask**  
**and forgets his infidelity.**

 

Eve is a quiet little girl, silent.  
Alex looks at her playing with a Cerberus, jumping around his neck, and ignoring the bitter odor of putrefaction.  
"She is growing." she says, and Stuart nods.  
"She's not afraid of anything." she continues, and Stuart glances at her with a gaze - urges her to continue.  
"Albert's plan will kill her. _Us_."  
Silence.  
The Cerberus yelps, wags his tail.  
"He will stop himself in time." Stuart assures her, carrying his hands behind his back "Eve is a miracle, Master Alex, the first little girl born of two Tyrants. _Your daughter_."  
Alex releases a dry laugh, rough.  
"Someone would call her an abomination."  
"And what would you call her, Master Alex?"  
Eve laughs as the dog lickes her face, Alex curls her nose at the nauseating smell of Cerberus's saliva.  
Stuart looks at her, tilting his face in her direction.

_He waits._

Eve seeks her mother's eyes - _invokes_ her.  
Alex has no name for something that destroys her heart at every beat.

 

 **No one ever listens, this wallpaper glistens**  
**one day they'll see what goes down in the kitchen.**

 

Her father's dream already stinks of decadence and failure.  
Eve can feel it on her skin, between her fingers - a viscous coat that drops down her nostrils, her throat.

_Uroboros._

The virus rises to that word, _rumbling_ \- it blows, screams and screams.  
His father has tired eyes, dull; a faded red and sunk into the orbits.  
He clutches her mother's face, presses his fingertips into the tender flesh of her wrists - then bows his head, leaving it dangling between his shoulders.

 _"I can't."_  
_"You don't **want** to."_  
_"The world needs it."_  
_"Bullshit: **you** need it, you and **only** you."_

Eve sniffs fear, remorse; under her tongue the acid of the defeat, between her lashes tears that will never be shed.  
Her mother closes her eyes, releases an exhausted sigh - _crushed._

 _"You will die."_  
_"No."_  
_"The Uroboros will fail."_  
_"No. It can't."_

Under the maninka and the skin of his father there is a new smell, _heavier:_ blackish and sticky.  
The Progenitor tells her _to stay away, it is an unworthy, dirt parasite._  
Eve is tormenting the edge of her shirt, she nods - she accepts the only voice she could ever trust.

 _"Albert."_  
_"I'll be back."_  
_"No, you will not."_

Her dad gnashes his teeth, makes a frustrated, _desperate_ sound.  
He interlaces his fingers with her mother's, draws her to him - speaks to her through images that Eve doesn't know.

_She can't._

Those images tell a story.  
They tell of two kidnapped children, dismantled and then rebuilt to **His** image and likeness.  
They tell of two experiments to test, _measure._  
They tell of an ambitious little boy, a cruel man.  
They tell of an abandoned girl to her solitude, a ruthless woman.

 _"I'll be back, Alexandra."_  
_"And if you don't?"_  
_"Then wait."_

They tell, those pictures.

 _Of her, her parents._  
_Of who will kill them and who will kill to protect them._  
_Of a past that changes at any moment in the future - a present that escapes._

Eve closes her eyes, crawling on her own feet.

_She falls into an abyss of blood **and** desire, a lump of long-suppressed feelings **and** wounds that are now infected **and** suppurative._

His father searches for her mother's mouth, _breathes_ \- breaks her sadness, her doubts.  
Her mother accepts him, _bites_ \- she clings to his promises, to his body.  
Eve wondered if the weight she felt in the heart was what adults called ~~love.~~

 

********

**#0 - sensory overload**

 

 **'Cause all your heads are gonna roll**  
**I've made your misery my goal,**  
**so if you want survival**  
**kneel on my arrival**  
**for this is how I rule the world.**

 

Burnt meat, molten rock.  
Eve is overwhelmed by an odor that has no origin- not _here_ , not on the island.  
She looks for a handhold, collapses on her knees - she suffocates a retch.  
Skin that melts, bones that become liquid - dust that clings to her nostrils, in her lungs.  
Eve opens her mouth, tries to call her mother.

_She fails._

The Progenitor is a crazy snake slamming against the walls of her mind, and it's the first time it happens.

_And this terrorizes her._

The Progenitor _screams_ , an agony that Eve has never experienced - a pain that tears her limbs and breaks her with a pathetic sob.  
She breathes, exhales: she is hit in the chest by a nauseous, rancid odor.  
It has no shape, size: it is black _and_ black, a purulent bladder that pulsates.  
Eve presses her closed fists on her temples, releases a single cry.

 _Coagulated blood, sweat._  
_Dry grass, melted plastic._  
_Adrenaline , bone and muscle._  
_Worn organs, molten metal and then crumpled._

Eve tries to get up, falls.

_Maninka and leather._

She bites her lips, tries to get rid of the Progenitor - the _horrible_ truth it is telling to her.

_Father._

One last hurdle. One last shot.

_No._

Smoke and black powder; the debris of a man and his ~~crazy~~ dream.  
Eve closes her eyes and begins to cry.

 

********

 

**#4 - taste**

**Places, places, get in your places**  
**throw on your dress and put on your doll faces.**

 

Eve is a year and nine months old.  
Eve didn't notice she was falling, but under her tongue the taste of blood reminds her that _yes_ , she did.  
She seeks the Progenitor, finds it hidden in the deepest folds of its fear, a skinned snake.  
She inspires, swallows.  
She stretches her fingers in front of her, _inside_ her mind - black ties that probe, touch, _ruin._  
His father's Progenitor is silent - dead.  
Eve frowns, slammed between the remains of a defeated virus, _torn._  
Down the throat the bitterness of consciousness, the roughness of a new feeling - ruthless.  
Eve shakes, scatters in the misery of a story already written - she goes to her mother's Progenitor and...

_No._

Eve observes ~~the~~ ~~Progenitor's~~ her mother crumble as if she had never existed.

 

 **Everyone thinks that we're perfect,**  
**please don't let them look through the curtains.**

The sadness has a taste.  
It is bitter under the tongue, in her throat.  
The pain has a taste.  
It's metallic in the mouth, sticky between the teeth.  
Despair has a taste.  
It's nauseating when you brush your lips, dense.  
"Mom." she calls - _pleads._

_But there is no one who can answer her._

Alex looks away and stares at her with dead and hopeless eyes.

 

 **Picture, picture, smile for the picture**  
**pose with your brother, won't you be a good sister?**

Stuart opens his mouth in a smile, caresses her hair.  
"It's your birthday, Eve." he remembers, and sits at her side "You should make a wish."  
Eve fixes a chocolate and hazelnuts cake, her favorite.  
Stuart made it, she's sure of it. In Sushestvovanie there are no pastry shops or similar stores.  
She would like to smile, Eve.  
She would like to thank him, take a slice and share it with him.  
She is two years old, Eve, yet the Progenitor made her more older - more _aware._  
She sighs, bites her lip - a blond haired bundle and her eyes are too blue.

_Too much like **him.**_

Stuart touches the back of her hand, interlaces his fingers with hers.  
"Eve."  
"Where's mum?" she asks suddenly, and her voice is fragile, _sad._  
Stuart straightens his shoulders, releasing a half breath.  
"She must work."

_Lie._

Eve bows her head, nods.

_Accept the lie for what it is: a weak attempt to protect her._

"Well." he goes on to press a cheerful inflection in his words: "What slice do you want to cut, that, with the sugarcake, or the one with the caramel house?"  
Eve breathes, bends her lips in a grimace.

_She seeks the Progenitor, her mother - is brutally left alone._

She points her finger to the caramel house, looks at Stuart cut it and put on a pink and white candle.  
"Happy birthday, Eve."  
Eve hints a smile, a tired, dry expression.  
She _blows_ \- extinguishes a flame that always burns the same desire.  
Her mother's Progenitor is an endless scream.

 

**#5 - touch**

 

 **Uh-oh, she's coming to the attic, plastic,**  
**go back to being plastic.**

"Eve, stop it."  
It's the first time she talks to her in months.  
It's the first time she's looking into her eyes.  
It is the first time she realizes that she is still her - that _she exists._  
"No."  
Eve watches her mother bares her teeth, advances - Hera and all her terrible strength.  
" _Stop it_!" she orders - begs, but Eve is too young to understand.  
The infected are thrown against the walls of the cells, disordered - _desperate_.  
_The Mistress has arrived_ , they cry in their heads, _the Mistress wants us._  
They chew their own flesh, tear muscles, bowels, bones, _everything_ ; they offer everything to Eve and her blind fury.  
"Eve!" she calls her, looks for her.

_Now, too late._

She's angry, Eve.  
She is alone _and_ sad _and_ uncomfortable _and_ she is _scared_.  
The Progenitor is broken without his father, _incomplete._  
She had become accustomed to that constant and sharp presence - a virus that _always_ wanted, _never_ allowed.  
She was used to him, to **his** smell - leather and maninka.  
She had grown accustomed to hearing her mother laughed in the middle of the night, his father's voice.  
She had become accustomed to _them_ \- to what the Progenitor whispered to her.  
"Eve."  
Her mother is soft under her fingers, tepid.  
It is the silk of a white shirt like her skin, the heavy black stone around her neck.  
It's a late excuse, a pain too big to be shared.  
The infected collapse to the ground, some dead, other almost.  
Eve clenches to her mother and to all the promises now broken.

 

 **Mom, please wake up.**  
**Dad's with a slut, and your son is smoking cannabis.**

 

She didn't tell her how he was dead: she didn't want to.  
She told her instead of how he lived, in what he believed.  
She explained what they were - beyond biology and science.  
She allowed her to touch her sadness, her pain, a burn that never healed.  
She assured her that Stuart will take care of her _after_ \- because her time has almost expired and the hourglass is consuming the last grains.  
Eve is three and four months old when she realizes that her mother has never survived her father.

 

 **Dollhouse, dollhouse,**  
**I see things that nobody else sees.**

Her mother has thin, strong fingers.  
She is soft, and between the thumb and the index there is a small scar ( _a gun_ , the Progenitor explains).  
She squeezes her hands all the time.  
Eve looks at her eyes, nods - she holds back tears.  
She wants to be strong; wants to be _worthy._  
_Where did you hear this word?_ asks her mother, and she hesitates.  
_Daddy,_ she answers, _when I was little._  
But she **is** little, Eve.  
She is four years and three days old, Stuart at her side and a bigger cake.  
Her mother strengthens her grip, the ring (white gold _and_ obsidian) that affects the palm of her hand.  
_You're worthy, Eve. You're **all** that the world should be_ , she replies, and there is a hard note in her voice, ruthless.  
Eve nods again, her arms protruding forward, her hair collected on her back.  
Her mother tightens her wrists, her elbows.  
_I have to go away, Eve. For a while._  
_How long?_  
_I don't know._  
_Will you be like daddy?_ and there is a micro-expression that crosses her mother's face - fear, perhaps.  
_No,_ she reassures her, _no; I'll be back to you._

 _ **We** will come back to you,_ the Progenitor roars, and it is the first time since then it feels so strong, _sure._

Eve breathes, hiding the trembling that shakes her from within.  
_It's a good family, Eve, but you will never show for what you are: **never.** Hide, grow. The Progenitor will tell you what to do._  
Eve closes her eyes, memorizes the consistency of her mother's skin, the scars that run between her fingers, under her fingertips.

_Her smell, her voice; All to which she can cling to when loneliness threatens to crush her._

Eve Wesker ceases to exist on June 20, 2011: the world will know her as one of the many girls that the Edonia war has left orphaned.

 

********

**#6 - Progenitor**

**Hey, girl, open your walls, play with your dolls,**  
**we'll be a perfect family.**

 

It's not her name, it's not her home.  
They are not her parents, it's not her story.  
It's not what she wants, that's not what she desires.

The Progenitor asks - _demands._

 _Megan,_ they call her.  
_My little one,_ they dazzle her.  
_Honey,_ they says to her.

Eve swallows all those ridiculous names and smiles.

 

Eve is five years and two days old.  
They have prepared a vanilla cake. Pink. With unicorns.  
She looks to her rainbow slice, vibrates under the skin - between the bowels, where the Progenitor beats and _pulsates._  
Her **fake** mother watches her - apprehensive - her **fake** father has a camera between his fingers, the index ready.  
Eve smiles ( _as her mother taught to her_ ) lies ( _as her father taught to her_ ) raising her thumb toward them.

Click.

That photo will be the first thing her revenge will burn.

 

A silent little girl, introverted, they defined her.  
Her new fake parents say she is a victim of war - she doesn't speak much.  
They say _what horrors she should have seen over there,_ and they look at her with tenderness.  
They say it will pass; everything will pass.  
They say she is a good little girl, and the teachers nod - _certainly, her performance is high, the attitude positive. We just want a little more participation in school life._  
They say, **and** promise, **and** affirm **and**...  
The Progenitor is the only voice that has always told her the truth.

 

She's selfish, Eve.  
She is burning with the typical craving of children; they want _everything_ , no concessions.  
The Progenitor _grows_ with her - she feeds it with all the repressed feelings left rotting in her chest as dead leaves.  
She closes her eyes, gives to herself a moment with the virus - she _extends_ it, stretching its slopes to where her mind can go and...

_Mother?_

The Progenitor retracts, scared.

 

They laughed at her, _humiliated_ her.  
_You're ugly,_ they told her, _you look like one of those albinos. You're sick._  
_Eve, the sick girl. Eve, the albino._  
And they _laugh._ They shove her. They _push_ her.  
Eve retracts - the Progenitor _roars_ , tells her what to do, how.  
_Yes, you're sick, it confirms, you're the virus that will clean this world. You are the infection that they can't stop_ \- _that will reduce them to blood and vomit in the arms of their **unworthy** parents ._  
_Yes, you're sick, Eve. And then show them your_ tremendous, _ruthless illness._  
The pupil of Eve is reduced to a very thin thread, the iris _burns_ \- erases, destroys, _pounds._

 _Dead. Unworthy. Dead unworthy._ the Progenitor whispers, and Eve smiles - cruel, beautiful.

She stares to the point where there were once three ~~innocent~~ children - now only a reddish and molly puddles.  
Eve looks in the mirror (she is eight years old, her father's cheekbones, her mother's lips) and she sees it.

_Progenitor._

The bathroom door closes behind her without making any noise.

 

Sometimes she wonders where Stuart is.  
She remembers his wrinkled, warm hands: his smile, gray hair like a silver crown.  
She remembers his cakes, the way he spoke to her- quiet, reassuring.  
His voice was so different from that of his father - heavy, monocorde; wrapped in a fierce, _wild_ depth.  
Eve follows her fingernail in a crack in the table's wood, smiles at a squirrel who runs close to her.  
With the tip of the index she touches her piece of pizza before bites a generous portion.  
It's not a bad life; not all of it, at least.

_But it is not hers._

Cindy celebrates her tenth birthday, she invited her - reluctantly.

 _Nobody likes that silent little girl who is full of_ too much - _that brings war in the eyes and in the heart._

Eve sighs, throws a piece of pizza at a bird that watches her, curious.  
The Progenitor sits at her side and ~~tells~~ remembers.

 

Something is changed; something hinders it.  
Eve closes her eyes, focuses: she projects the Progenitor _forward_ , then at the corners - _stretches_ it, like the natural extension of her limb.  
The Progenitor is a snake who hears **everything** \- it tells her **everything.**  
There is a vibration point - which resembles a known, beloved smell. That reminds her of mother and her virus (fragile, ruthless, _fierce._ )  
Eve can't access to it, and it's frustrating.

_Scary._

What if there were others like her? And if they wanted to hurt her? And if was better to stay away, hidden in this _suffocating_ normality?  
She clutches her teeth, shivering - an electric shock between her fingers, along the vertebrae, up to her back.  
Then she touches something else, a black knot with no cracks in it.  
The Progenitor surrounds it, studying it.  
It walks between her thoughts, asks her how to proceed.  
_Go,_ she says, _go on._  
It's touching it, probing - _beat_ _it_ , hoping to get some reaction.  
This thing doesn't react, doesn't attack - doesn't defend itself.  
It's just there, _inert._

_Dead._

Eve suddenly stiffens, bends her fingers in claws - stifles a sob.

_It is impossible._

In the air maninka and leather.

 

Eve learned how to play the violin.  
It was asked by her fake mother, and she was satisfied now.  
_You have to give them something_ , the Progenitor suggested to her, _you have to pretend._  
Eve is good: a natural talent.  
She plays a desperate and tragic solo in the small school theater, such a deep, _sad_ sound that somebody in the audience even starts to cry.  
She repeats the only song she knows - a waltz that her mother and her father had danced on invisible notes.  
She bows her head when the applause coming, goes out of the scene - _hides._  
Carol is the next girl, and she plays a song from the Merchant of Venice.  
Eve looks at her with no interest, caressing the violin strings distractedly.  
"I was better to play the piano."

_Silence._

She turns, she perceives the Progenitor scratching like a dog at the chain.  
There is a girl with sharp cheekbones who is staring at her, blond hair collected in a tall chignon.  
"Moonlight Sonata was the first track I played, but I don't have nice memories of that song."  
Nineteen years, nothing more: legs wrap in black, an ambiguous smile on her face.  
"I liked Vivaldi more, the Winter, not the Spring; too cheap, too used."  
She advances a few steps, sits in front of her.  
"Even your father played the piano, you know? Jupiter, symphony 41. Mozart. Nomen omen."  
Eve nods, the Progenitor is silent, astonished.  
Carol finishes her performance, leaves the scene to Mark and his imitation of Justin Bieber.  
The girl reclines on her back, _studying_ her - she gives a happy, approving sound.  
"You have grown up."  
Eve tightens the violin handle to her chest, she doesn't understand why the Progenitor _goes out._  
"You look _so much_ like your dad."  
The harmonic case crushes her ribs, her hip; the virus is an unstable wave under her skin.  
The girl bends over to her, looking for her eyes - beyond the trembling pupil and arctic iris.  
"Eve."

_Her real name._

She calls her, she _conjures_ her.  
"Eve." she repeats, and something leaps in the girl's eyes - _melts_ ; they become red _and_ red.  
Mark is half of his performance when he _falls_ \- the audience laughs, and applauds.  
"It's me."

_Mom._

The Progenitor _explodes_ , frees up from the node in which it had taken refuge and slipped into every synapse, every cell.  
Lets every memory be remembered, every time stolen comes back to life;  
Eve searches in the girl's mind, sees a child die ( ~~Natalia Korda~~ ) her mother _ascend_ , recover a life left in half.

_Mom._

Eve raises her face, touches the cheeks of the girl - lets the Progenitor recompose the pieces for her.  
She has the same smell of her mother, argan _and_ blood.  
She has the same flavor under the tongue, the sour of a ruthless and voracious spirit.  
She has the same eyes, transparent as a winter sky.  
She has the same softness in the hands, on the skin - in the hair.  
She always has the same voice between her thoughts, in her heart.  
"Mom?"  
The girl smiles, full lips open and dripping blood.  
_Yes, Eve,_ the Progenitor whispers to her, _I'm back to you._  
Mark concludes his _pathetic_ recitation stumbling into an electric wire and breaking his ankle.

 

********

 

 **Took them by surprise,**  
**worked my way uphill,**  
**they looked into my eyes;**  
**I became invincible.**

 

"Do you like it?" her mother asks to her, and gives her a hazelnut and chocolate ice cream.  
Eve nods, takes a first bite - she smiles when she caresses her hair.  
It's a nice day in New York; clean, and beautiful. Of those that make you feel free, _full_ of hope.  
Skyscrapers shine under a warm sun, steel and glass monsters challenging its grandeur, craving its touch.  
Eve shakes her feet over the edge of the bench, takes a second bite - stares to her mother.  
She isn't as she remembers, yet the Progenitor overlaps the profile of this girl with hers, making them _terribly_ similar.  
Her mother smiles, and Eve notes she's less pale than once - stronger.  
"One day I'll explain." she says, answering her silent question "One day you will understand."

 _That I killed Death and I went back._  
_That I defeated Fear and made it my slave._  
_That I destroyed the Doubt and made it my personal toy._

Eve nods, breathes - she seems to do it for the first time.  
"And now?" she asks, bites the ice cream wafer " Do I have to go back to _them_?"  
Her mother shows a frowning expression, releasing an irritated mumble.  
"No." she replies, "No, Eve: you will not have to come back to them again."

_From a family I had chosen only to slaughter them as the worst of the beasts._

Eve smiles, the ice cream pouring between her fingers, along her wrist.  
A bird lands near her shoe, catches a forgotten crumb.  
The park is full of life - under her hands, in her chest.  
Her mother relaxes backwards, her long legs wrapped in black.  
One question lies between them - silent **and** heavy: _painful._  
Eve watches her mother get up, put on a red coat - around her ring finger a white gold _and_ obsidian ring.

_A symbol who had transcended time and destiny_

"Come on, Eve." she draws a smile when she sees her trying to clean her hand on plastic napkins.

_Silence._

The park is suddenly silent, empty.  
The sun stops, astonished.

_Scared._

Something breaks; something _gets free._  
Eve stops at half of the gesture, opens her eyes.

_Father?_

The Progenitor _roars_ , an annihilating fire that consuming _everything_ \- every uncertainty.  
That lump full of **everything** \- impenetrable - gives up, and Eve understands.

_She sees him._

"Your dad waits for us."

_Eve._

On the ground what remains is a skin that has never been hers.

 

 

 

 **"Life is not like water.**  
**Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route."**  
**\- Haruki Murakami -**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Charmsfly for the help with my typos and errors! You are very kind!


End file.
